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Lots of people are working from home right now, many for the first time and not by choice, which can be challenging. In this white paper, we provide practical recommendations for ways you can design a place to do great work from home.

Working from home is awesome (commit to that thought). Before we dive in, it’s important to recognize how much our own thoughts and beliefs affect us. How you think about working from home is very important and there are very real benefits to working from home that we can all appreciate. Talking positively about working from home is a great chance to influence your colleagues’, family’s, and friends’ opinions about working from home. When your social circle agrees that sheltering has its perks, their consensus may even help you during some inevitably challenging moments[1].

As many people (us included) practice physical distancing and work from home to prevent the spread of coronavirus, we’d like to share a few ideas for designing a workspace in your home.

We start every design project by setting goals and this one is no different. For most usually-in-an-office workers we want to design a place where you can efficiently do great work in your home. Looking at this same idea a little more deeply, we’re designing an environment that promotes optimal cognitive functioning, which refers to multiple mental abilities, including learning, thinking, reasoning, remembering, problem-solving, decision making, and attention[2].

How in-control you perceive yourself to be may actually improve the quality of work that you do - so take some simple steps so you can feel good about making the best of your situation, even if it’s not ideal. We’re going to look at a few strategies to improve the control you have over your attention by reducing distractions, so you can avoid the inefficiencies of interruptions. This is an important component to working at home and you may find it interesting to know that your perception of control over your environment informs your attitude about work, which is associated with performance and work outcomes[3].

Attention is crucial for human performance[4] and can be affected by many factors, including sound, temperature, and light. If you live with others, or have ever worked in an open office, you’re probably aware of the intrusions that can come from being near other people. Those intrusions likely fall into 1 of 2 categories: purposeful or accidental. An example of an accidental interruption would be overhearing a conversation that just happens to catch your attention. A purposeful interruption would be your roommate or child letting you know they just got a snack. Neither are inherently good or bad, but both break your focus and the amount of time it takes to regain that focus may vary based on your emotional response. For example, the thought “it’s cute that my child is enjoying a snack and wants me to know” is likely to result in your returning to work much faster and in a better mindset than if you were to think “why does she keep interrupting me?! I already told her I’m working!” Regardless, there are a lot of benefits in reducing accidental interruptions and reminding the snacker that you’re trying to concentrate.

Your home office doesn’t need to look like an office inside your home. Lots of people use a spare bedroom or other dedicated space to use as a home office[5], but this isn’t an available option for everyone and it isn’t always necessary. The most important feature of a dedicated room is the door, which signals a separation from home. If a room with a door isn’t available, this signaling can effectively be achieved in other ways.

Our Founder Matt Finn lives in a two-bedroom condo with his wife and their two daughters (5 years old and 2 months old). While working from home, Matt uses the kitchen table as his desk and a blanket as the door to “daddy’s office”. The blanket is a psychological boundary for his older daughter - it reminds her that daddy is “at work” and in a way that doesn’t feel dismissive to his daughter. Matt being able to avoid interruptions makes the time he spends more efficient and allows him to spend quality time with his whole family when he’s done for the day.

Use earbuds (with foam or rubber tips) to play white noise while you work. Our ears adjust to noise levels in a similar way to how our eyes adjust to light levels. A tight seal will block unwanted sounds (functioning as earplugs) while the white noise will mask others, like people talking. This is a much more effective strategy than using more advanced (see: expensive) technologies that sound like they would work well (pun intended) such as noise-canceling headphones. We also recommend using wired or wireless earbuds without Bluetooth, whenever possible, to avoid unnecessary exposure to wireless radiation[6].

Warning: this will require you to be really honest with yourself, flexible, and realistic. Depending on a number of factors, silence, white noise, or music may be best for your productivity. Choose an acoustic environment that helps you work, which may not be the same as what you prefer in other situations, such as your free time.

There are many resources available online about optimizing your home office, but the above are our top recommendations for maintaining attention, that are readily achievable for most people. Additionally, consider ergonomics and thermal comfort, which are also very important. Next, we’re going to discuss other aspects of your environment when working from home that can complement these basic strategies.

Living a healthy lifestyle can benefit your health, work performance, and creativity. People operate at a higher level when their body is in sync with nature’s rhythms. A person’s circadian rhythm is an internal process that regulates many behaviors and molecular processes including our sleep/wake cycle; we naturally sleep at night and are awake during the day. The influence of our circadian rhythms extends well beyond regulating sleep and includes attention, alertness, and performance, amongst others[7]. Additionally, a role of the circadian clock is to coordinate functions of the immune system both at steady-state and in response to infectious threats[8]. All of this is important, and especially so while we’re spending most of our time at home and faced with the acute threat of a communicable disease.

People are separated from their coworkers and still need social interaction with others. For many people, there is a lot of overlap between personal and professional social groups. Precautions and outcomes of coronavirus have temporarily or permanently changed many people’s social groups. While your social environment may change, your social needs remain the same. It is typically the family, who may be standing in for co-workers in this capacity[5]. In addition to talking with the people in your household, make it a priority to keep in close contact with your friends and extended family; this is especially important for people who live alone. Schedule a virtual lunch, or go on a virtual date, or get together for a physical-distanced walk[9] through your neighborhood.

Get creative about using all the spaces in and around your home to create varied and unique experiences. Shared experiences, even painful ones, are a fundamental element of social cohesion[10] and sheltering in place is an opportunity for many families, who may otherwise not have much time together, to grow closer together. Turn the sofa into a fort for movie night, make messy art in the bathtub, eat dinner in the living room, exercise together outside. And do this while maintaining healthy work/life boundaries.

One risk to be mindful of, while working from home, is that you can always be at work. For example, bringing your laptop to bed can be disruptive to both your circadian rhythm and relationship with your significant other. We also recommend not keeping your cell phone in the bedroom, unless it’s absolutely necessary. Objects have meaning and this connection to the outside world can be an unwanted reminder of work or current events that detract from good sleep hygiene.

There’s no denying that this is a challenging situation; our thoughts and prayers are with those who are experiencing the hardest parts of this pandemic.

As many people prioritize health by working from home, the things we learn about ourselves, our behavior, and our environment will be a benefit to our health well beyond when restrictions are lifted. Take advantage of this temporary opportunity to live a healthier lifestyle and be thinking of how the benefits can stay with you permanently. Working from home can be a great experience.

References

1. Moussaïd, M., Kämmer, J. E., Analytis, P. P., & Neth, H. (2013). Social influence and the collective dynamics of opinion formation. PloS one, 8(11).

2. Fisher, G. G., Chacon, M., & Chaffee, D. S. (2019). Theories of Cognitive Aging and Work. In Work Across the Lifespan (pp. 17- 45). Academic Press.

3. Lee, S. Y., & Brand, J. L. (2010). Can personal control over the physical environment ease distractions in office workplaces?. Ergonomics, 53(3), 324-335.

4. Valdez, P. (2019). Focus: Attention Science: Circadian Rhythms in Attention. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 92(1), 81.

5. Magee, J. L., & Arch, M. S. (2000). Home as an alternative workplace: Negotiating the spatial and behavioral boundaries between home and work. Journal of Interior Design, 26(2), 35-47. S

6. Kostoff, R. N. (2019). Adverse Effects of Wireless Radiation.. 2019. PDF.

7. Fisk, A. S., Tam, S. K., Brown, L. A., Vyazovskiy, V. V., Bannerman, D. M., & Peirson, S. N. (2018). Light and cognition: Roles for circadian rhythms, sleep, and arousal. Frontiers in neurology, 9, 56.

8. Orozco-Solis, R., & Aguilar-Arnal, L. (2020). Circadian regulation of immunity through epigenetic mechanisms. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 10.

9. Farrance, C., Tsofliou, F., & Clark, C. (2016). Adherence to community based group exercise interventions for older people: A mixed-methods systematic review. Preventive Medicine, 87, 155-166.

10. Bastian, B., Jetten, J., & Ferris, L. J. (2014). Pain as social glue: Shared pain increases cooperation. Psychological science, 25(11), 2079-2085.